RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Letter from Birmingham Jail (Martin Luther King Jr.)

My friends I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was not ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’. It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never’. We must come to see with one of our distinguished jurists that ‘justice delayed’ is justice denied.’

Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, 1964.

RKS Literature: Celebrating Non-Belongers (Salman Rushdie)

But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-believers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves, we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our places of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask; if we did not recognize them in our least fulfilled needs we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: Outsideness (Salman Rushdie)

 For a long while I have believed-this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsideness-that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated throughout human history, by lack of opportunity. And not only that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identifies beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belonger’s seal of approval.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: Lurid Story Telling at a Party of Indian Intellectuals (Salman Rushdie)

 Clusters of intellectuals had formed around certain beautiful women – the starlet Pia Aziz, the artist Aurora Zogoiby – while most of the other women were sitting at the feet of a boozy but celebrated Muslim writer of low-life stories which was shocking them by providing, in the most exquisite and ornate Urdu Sir Darius Xerxes Cama had ever heard, detailed and hair raising descriptions of the worst things in the world, undisguised by circumlocution, unfettered by good taste. He spoke naturally in that famous glittering prose which was somehow both voluptuous and precise, at once dainty and appalling of the degraded interiors of the local insane asylum, of the brutal murders and casual rapes that were the city’s hidden news, of the corruption of those in authority and the violence in the hearts of the poor, of incestuous love affairs in high society and the killing of daughters in slums, of the caged whores of Falkland Road and of the mafias who ran the city’s organized crime and would order men’s penises to be severed as casually as they would call for a bunch of red bananas in a bazaar.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS Literature: Emerging Rock n Roll in India as a Decadent Virus (Salman Rushdie)

He began to hold music responsible for the world’s ills and would even argue in his cups, that its practitioners should be wiped out, eradicated, like a disease. Music was a virus, an infection, and music lovers were comparable to those globe-trotting sexual immoralists whose nameless activities had resulted in the global spread of syphilis.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS AMERICAN LITERATURE: Hymie’s Bull (Ralph Ellison)

Bulls are pretty bad people to meet if you’re a bum. They have head-whipping down to a science and they’re always ready to go into action. They know all the places to hit a bone to turn it into jelly, and they seem to feel just the place to kick you to make your backbone feel like it’s going to fold up like the old collapsible drinking cups we used when we were kids. One a bull hit me across the bridge of my nose and I felt I was coming apart like a cigarette floating in a urinal. They can hit you on the head and bust your shoes.

(A bull in hobo slang in this case means a railway security guard)

“Hymie’s Bull”, Ralph Ellison, 1937

PRESS RELEASE: RORY DYLAN STEPHEN TO CONTINUE HIS ADVENTURES AND SHARING WITH THE WORLD: “BEYOND PUPPYDOM”

Canine News: Alstätten, Switzerland; 5August2026: In an exclusive interview with Bob, master of the famous soon to be one year old West Highland Terrier Rory Dylan Stephen, we can confirm the following;

  • Rory is undergoing intensive trauma therapy at the Kay Nine Clinic in Alstätten, Switzerland
  • Rory will continue publicizing his observations, trials, adventures and misfortunes in the upcoming “Rory Dylan Stephen: Beyond Puppydom”
  • A full theatrical release “From Hostage to Hero” based on his first set of memoirs “Lost in Puppydom” is being finalized produced and starring Nicole Kidman, Kelly Riptide and Argentinian actor Rodrigo Noya
  • The Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Ottawa has announced an upcoming tour of China with Rory to be called the Canada China Friendship Tour in an effort to “encourage eternal friendship between the citizens of Canada and China”. A media event has been scheduled on October 6th and the Chinese Embassy to provide details of the tour at that date
  • Amy Pickenbobber Enterprises in Guelph, Ontario has announced production of Rory dolls and coffee mugs
  • A new dog walking park called “Rory Brave One” will be opened in Singapore on 16October2026
  • A new tour of the Eastern and Oriental Express will be operational in 2027 recreating the mayhem and murders witnessed by Rory on his last ride there. “Train Murder in Malaysia” is the name of the tour and will feature actors and Raffles a bestie Westie friend of Rory.

We were unable to see Rory as he was undergoing a therapy grooming.

THE PENNILESS PENSIONER WINE OBSERVATION: CABALLO DORADO A CARMENÈRE FROM CHILE

Carmenére is one of the consistently good red Chilean wines.

And it meets my criteria of $16 and under.

And if you believe in ratings it has received a 92 from James Suckling which means I would subtract 4 points from that. He suffers from inflationary scores. And as pensioners don’t we know about inflation.

Loads of red fruits when you swirl and sniff. Please don’t tell me you are drinking from a Mason jar! Lots of red cherry and blackberry and a bit of retro mintiness more prevalent in Chilean wines of yesteryear.

Brimming with red fruit and black fruit when it goes down the hatch and it is a bit peppery.

If you can afford beef these days let’s revert to the food of our past and drink it with spoon burgers while we are watching the Ted Mack Amateur Hour brought to you by Geritol. Drink slightly cool. Never drink red wine at room temperature.

PP Wine Score: VERY GOOD

Caballo Dorado Gran Reserve Carmenère 2022, Colchagua Valley, Chile, 13.5%, $15.95

The Penniless Pensioner discusses wines under $16 Canadian and makes no endorsement or receives any payola for reviewing wines. He advises you ensure when drinking wine you avoid any unpleasant reactions with prescription medication.

You can follow the life of PP at a-little-birdie-told-me.ca

RKS Literature: British Boarding Schools Creators of Psychopaths (Salman Rushdie)

Cyrus Cama was sent away to boarding school, still with murder in his eyes, banished to an implacable hill-station establishment which based its methods upon the tried and true British principles of cold baths, bad food, regular beatings and high-quality academic instruction, and which helped him to develop into the full-blooded psychopath he afterwards became.

Salman Rushdie, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, 1999

RKS RUSSIAN LITERATURE: The Chink of Gold Coins on the Roulette Table Drives the Gambler into Near Convulsions! (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

When I hear the cries of the croupiers – ‘Trente-et-un rouge, impair et passe’. ‘Quatre, noir, pair et manque’ it’s with a sort of apprehension, a sort of sinking feeling in my heart. How greedily I look at the gaming table, with its scattered louis d’or, gold friedrichs and thalers, at the streams of gold as they pour from the croupier’s hands and pile up into heaps of gold that flash like fire, at the rolls of silver lying around the wheel. Even two rooms away, I can hear the chink of that money, so much so that I almost go into convulsions.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Gambler”, 1866